THE BEAN OOOSK. 37 



Island) return for October states, tliat on the night of the 11th 

 they had light airs of wiud with hazy weather, when nine dozen 

 of larks, snipes, and woodcocks were caught fluttering about the 

 lantern; and had more assistance been at hand, double that num- 

 ber might have been secured.""^ 



The following note of the species of birds which had been 

 killed at various times by flying against the lighthouse on Tory 

 Island (off the northern coast of Donegal) and preserved by 

 Mrs. Bailey there, was kindly communicated by Mr. G. C. Hynd- 

 man, who saw the specimens in August 1845 : — fieldfare, red- 

 wing, house-marten (killed in Dec. 1844), dunlin? ringed plover, 

 oyster-catcher, woodcock, landrail, wigeon, puf[iu,and stormy petrel. 

 The wigeon struck the copper dome above the light with such 

 force that the sound was mistaken for that of a cannon, as 

 a signal of distress, and the lighthouse-keeper actually sallied 

 out to ascertain the state of the case. The wigeon, of course, was 

 killed. Tennyson, in his last poem, " The Princess," describes 

 the heroine, on one occasion, as 



" Fixt like a beacon-tower, above the waves 

 Of tempest, when the crimson rolling eye 

 Glares ruiu, and the wild sea-birds on the light 

 Dash themselves dead." — (p. 89, first edit.) 



A friend, when woodcock-shooting for two days in Decembei', 

 1819, at Mountainstown demesne, near Navan, county Meath, 

 saw wild geese, in flocks of from ten to twenty, during the time ; 

 occasionally they came very near, though keeping out of range of 

 gun-shot : the firing at the woodcocks roused these geese from the 

 neighbouring bogs, which they frequent throughout the winter. 



Mr. G. Jackson (gamekeeper) informs me that " Wild geese 

 are very plentiful in all the counties of Connaught, where they 

 generally appear at the full of the moon after the middle of 

 October, and leave at the full of the moon in April. AVhen 

 d(!parting they generally take their flight in the after part of the 

 day, and bend their coiu'se towards the nearest point of sea-coast, 



* Bull'ast Comm. Chromdc, Dec. 16, 1839. 



